Fantastic Arcade: Every Day The Same Dream

Recently, we spent time in Austin, Texas at Fantastic Fest. In addition to being the country's best genre film festival (read: geek/horror/sci-fi/Asian/shock), they've added a Fantastic Arcade element that highlights the weird and wacky games out there, particularly in the independent games arena. We'll be presenting those for you right here.

Every Day The Same Dream represents a trip into the mundane life of an office drone in an effort to underscore the "cyclic nature of most video games." Creator Paolo Pedercini's game at first feels like a pointless experiment where you wake up, get dressed, and go to work, but repeated days compel you to try different paths, and you'll find that each one rewards you differently while taking you one step closer to an unknown goal.

More a work of art than a game, Every Day The Same Dream features an art style that recalls Out Of This World, with its pointy, angular graphics, and plunges you into a bleak outlook. The game (if it can be called that) puts you in the shoes of a man who rises every day, gets dressed, is greeted by his wife who tells him he's late, commutes to work, and sits in a cube farm. But is that all there is to life? The linear path you begin on has branches that aren't immediately apparent. For instance, who says you need to put your clothes on to go to work?

Unfortunately, the game isn't that big. It has a very finite area of exploration, and it'll probably only take you about 20 minutes to fully check out the world and figure out where things are going. But, that doesn't make it any less powerful. Play the game yourself and see what you think. Then, when you're done with that, move on to more of Molleindustria's games, including the excellent Oiligarchy, McDonald's: The Videogame, the non-linear poetry game Ergon / Logos, and the semi-follow up to Every Day The Same Dream, Inside A Dead Skyscraper.